75 hotel guests die trapped in a blazing cage

PROHIBITED security grills turned a budget hotel in the Philippines into a fiery prison for poor, devout Christians attending an evangelical conference. Julian Coman reports on the disaster

12:01AM BST 19 Aug 2001

The white-painted bars across the bedroom windows of the Manor Hotel were supposed to be a safety feature. But no one had made the simple calculation that if burglars were unable to get in, guests would not be able to get out.

As fire swept through the hotel in Quezon City, a suburb of Manila, early yesterday, more than 200 guests, including a handful of Americans, made that terrifying discovery for themselves.

Through the bars, desperate women pleaded for the lives of their children as searing heat burnt their backs and acrid fumes filled their lungs. The budget hotel had become a blazing prison.

Survival became a matter of who could cry the loudest. Those who won the attention of a fireman equipped with a circular saw were saved. Most were left to shout their despair to an impotent staring crowd until suffocation silenced them.

By dawn, 75 guests, including six children, were dead. At least 34 more were injured. Early reports indicated that all the victims were Filipinos, mainly from poor rural areas. Most of the hotel had been turned over to devout, impoverished Christians, who had spent hard-earned savings to attend an evangelical conference sponsored by an American movement called God's Flock.

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Throughout Friday, they had prayed together and sung of redemption, hope and a new life in God at the "Dawn Flower Destiny Conference". Almost half were never to witness another dawn. Some died wearing conference badges.

The fire began in a third-floor karaoke bar at 4am, possibly caused by a faulty air-conditioner. For 15 fatal minutes, the flames were allowed to take hold unhindered.

Besides having barred windows, the hotel rooms "were not furnished with fire alarms or emergency lights", said Danilo Cabrera, of the Manila Bureau of Fire Protection. As the flames spread, a security guard fired a pistol to try to rouse the sleeping guests.

Residents closest to the blaze searched for fire exits, but many were blocked or locked. One survivor said: "Nothing was clearly signposted. We went to the front lobby and found there was no fire exit. We didn't know where to go next."

Erwin Schwebler, a 60-year-old American attending the conference, managed to pull an air conditioner out of the wall to get through to a fire escape. "I don't know how many came out that way," he said. "The lights went out and we heard people screaming."

As heat and smoke intensified, trapped guests doused themselves with water. "We saw a lot of dead in the bathrooms," said Col Jacinto Dequiatco, a senior fire officer. " One had submerged his face in a toilet bowl. You can see the black noses of those who died. You can see they died of suffocation."

Outside, onlookers began to weep at the sight of the desperate faces pressed against the barred windows. "They looked like they were in a jail rather than a hotel," said a policeman.

No one could say that the authorities in the Philippine capital had not been warned. In March 1996, 160 Filipinos, mostly teenagers, lost their lives in a discotheque fire, also in the Quezon City area. Most of the victims suffocated while searching in vain for fire exits.

As survivors of yesterday's tragedy mourned lost friends and loved ones, Ricardo Nemenze, the city's fire chief, stated: "The installation of immovable metal bars on hotel windows is a violation of fire safety rules."

It emerged that the Manor Hotel had failed a standard inspection two months ago. The owners had been given 30 days to improve facilities.

Mr Nemenze said he did not know whether the changes had been implemented. He has now been suspended, pending an official inquiry into the tragedy. The authorities have vowed to press charges against all those found guilty of culpable negligence.

Prosecutions will do little to console Eleanor Scoffield. She had left her seven-year-old son and daughter, 17, at the hotel while she made a brief trip out of Manila.

Yesterday, she identified their bodies, along with the corpse of her daughter's boyfriend.

Suddenly bereft, all she could do was to cry out: "Lord! Lord! They did not leave anyone for me. I was hoping to see them alive, but they are all dead."